Admittedly, the strategy map and the tactical maps were designed to compliment each other, where some actions are better performed on the strategy map and others on the tactical map. As you pointed out, this is one of the situations where the tactical map is much more useful.

I was playing the Phillip campaign at normal difficulty, with only frontier cities left defended (mostly by just a spearman). See for yourself with my saved game file http://www.filethief.com/download/188/horrendous_scrum.zip.html. Pay no attention to the 35 hours played stat (it's embarrassing... maybe I left the game on overnights, maybe it's just that addictive).

Was the game not intended to be played with such large armies? I like to steamroll whole factions at a go with a vast host, but I guess there are other strategies.

When I play, I occasionally get battles that large, but it's the exception rather than the rule.

If you're roaming around with such a large army, you might find it useful to group them together, either by snapping them into formation or group-selecting them and issuing a nearby move order. That way they'll merge into one miniature, and you can separate them once you're ready for battle.

I'd like to group my units and envelop the besieged city with the Concave Formation, but the result is no good:

Groups of units don't form together properly in non-rectangular formations. This may be realistic, considering the discipline required. Here's a possible compromise: add the ability to rotate the rectangular units within a group. For example| / _| | / | --> | --> || | \_| \

You already do this by maneuvering units individually, but it's hard to keep their spacing. It would be much easier to envelop as group, letting the game engine automatically prevent overcrowding and gaps in the group's formation.

Regarding formations, something that might be handy would be some sort of blueprint of armies when moving another one. In Total Annihilation for example, when you selected a construction unit to make some buildings and you used shift to list'em, this unit's building prints were green, and you could see blueprints of other construction units so you wouldn't overlap new buildings on those that were to be built.

Regarding Hegemony, it would just be a little perk, so that when adjusting ballista's positions, I'm going to put my Phalangites in the right spot ahead of them to protect'em.

Eawyne might be on to something when it comes to construction units.Hegemony does a good job of balancing realism w/fun. Well, it might be a good idea to include engineer units in future games. I don't want to wreck the balance of hegemony, but engineer units or construction/demolition units have been a military necessity since armies became organized. It would be realistic and extremely fun to utilize engineer units in crossing rivers, sieges, swamps, hilly terrain etc. Gosh engineer units sure would work well if one was campaigning/invading in the wild and barbaric hinterlands of northern Gaul. Just an idea.

We're not going to have an engineering brigade in Rome, but I like the idea. In fact, in an earlier design of Rome we were going to allow workers to build siege equipment in the field. The biggest problem we faced with that design was the resource management. We didn't want the complication of having some workers carrying food, and some workers carrying wood; we just wanted wood to follow supply lines.

At the same time that this was going on, we were also having trouble with the fort design. We wanted the player to have a good reason to build forts before they sieged a nearby city — the Romans were famous for that tactic — but the game mechanics didn't really offer any benefit for playing that way.

The solution to both of these problems was to make forts the best place to build siege equipment. Siege equipment is slow, so you'll want to build it nearby, and the only way to do that is to build a fort first. Forts also solve the problem of how to move around resources, because you can just attach an ordinary supply line to them.

So in one fell swoop, we found a good reason to build forts, while still staying true to the idea that the Romans would have built their siege equipment nearby to the target.

If we did something more modern, I think I'd want to revisit the idea of an engineering brigade. The Romans weren't quite as organized in that regard — they made sure every legion had some skilled engineers to they could construct siege equipment and bridges as necessary, but they weren't a separate brigade — but if we did something set in, say, WWI? An engineering brigade would be perfectly at home.

Rick,Well said, I appreciate your quick response. Great answer and I appreciate the insight into the challenges of game balance that your team faces with making the hegemony games. Can't wait for Rome.